Date Published:

2002

Abstract:

We present a critique and extension of the mean-field approach to the mechanical pulling transition in bound polymer systems. Our model is motivated by the theoretically and experimentally important examples of adsorbed polymers and double-stranded DNA. We focus on the case in which quenched disorder in the sequence of monomers is unimportant for the statistical mechanics, but we include excluded volume interactions between monomers. Our phase diagram for the critical pulling force shows an interesting reentrant phase at low temperatures which should be observable in both disordered and homogenous polymer systems. We also consider the case of nonequilibrium pulling, in which the external force probes the molecule’s local, rather than global structure. The dynamics of the pulling transition in such experiments could illuminate the polymer’s loop structure, which depends on the nature of excluded volume interactions.

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